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> When people know that there's no assurance that the things…are "safe", … they tend to be a lot more careful. This is a good thing. No, it's not. I shouldn't

by mLuby 6y ago

> When people know that there's no assurance that the things…are "safe", … they tend to be a lot more careful. This is a good thing. No, it's not. I shouldn't have to check the piping of my gas heating system for leaks, or the wiring of my lights for shorts, or my car not to fall apart on the highway, or the food I bought to poison me. If I, and everyone else, had to do those things, I wouldn't have time to do anything else, so I wouldn't bother with those things and I'd live in a stone hut. You could argue that safety standards aren't strict enough, or aren't enforced (yes, we should address that litany of chemicals!), but there's no question that safety standards significantly improve our collective quality of life. P.S. Add "computer security" to that list of things I shouldn't need to care about.

thegrimmest 6y ago
The absence of specific regulation doesn't mean that you'd have to check everything yourself (however "trust but verify" is a saying for a reason). It would rather mean that the companies providing these services would be competing to most convincingly prove to you that their products are safe for your home and guaranteed to function. This competition would bear out in your heating or electric company guaranteeing their installation and agreeing to be liable for any damages caused by faults in their product. Your car already has such guarantees and warranties, and they are the result of market pressure. Computer security functions similarly - top companies would complete to provide guarantees of security by offering to cover losses that result from breaches. This already happens too. It's not as bleak as you make it out to be. Also we would all be much healthier if we lived in stone huts.
- nate_meurer 6y ago
  > This competition would bear out in your heating or electric company guaranteeing their installation and agreeing to be liable for any damages caused by faults in their product. That sound nice, but it doesn't work in reality. In reality, companies facing liability can, and often do, respond by simply dissolving, and the liability disappears. This is why I have a concrete tile roof that's falling off the house, with a worthless 30-year guarantee made by a company that no longer exists. And yes, a failing concrete tile roof is as dangerous as it sounds.
  - thegrimmest 6y ago
    There are many roofing companies over 50 years old that have stood by their guarantees. The choices are there in the market - you can buy a service from an upstart with no reputation and take a risk (but usually save some cash) or you can buy from an established provider with a reputation and pay a premium. This used to just be the way the world worked before we regulated it. I don't see what was wrong with it exactly.
    - nate_meurer 6y ago
      > There are many roofing companies over 50 years old that have stood by their guarantees. Name one. There are many, many more that haven't. I don't know how to find a company that is guaranteed to be around in even 20 years to honor a warranty, and neither do you. > The choices are there in the market - you can buy a service from an upstart with no reputation and take a risk (but usually save some cash) or you can buy from an established provider with a reputation and pay a premium. It doesn't matter how "established" or "reputable" the company is. There is nothing naturally permanent about any company. Companies shut down all the time for perfectly legitimate and benign reasons, like when the owners retire. How many contractors do you think pass on their businesses to their kids? I'll give you a hint if you need it. And if a company is facing liability, or even the possibility of liability, there is nothing preventing them from shedding some or all of their liability in bankruptcy. The company that installed my roof was big, established, and reputable. They installed concrete tile roofs on two dozen houses in our neighborhood. The owners retired over a decade ago, long before the problems with our roofs became evident. There was no negligence or massive incompetence, no scam of any kind. The company just didn't install the battens correctly, which was very common in the 90's. Most concrete tile roofs were installed incorrectly back then, and there is now a rash of failing roofs around our state. Nobody except the most naive outsider would rely on the promise of warrantees lasting decades to do anything to help this situation. > This used to just be the way the world worked before we regulated it. Citation please. Give me an historic "pre-regulation" example of what you're claiming.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  So where does the information how dangerous something is comes from? Are companies allowed to lie about other companies, because the first thing I would do as a competitor would be set up a "website" that propagates how dangerous other companies products are. This myth that somehow competition will sort things out really needs to disappear, it has been disproven again and again.
aeternum 6y ago
Regulatory capture is a big problem here. Safety standards become outdated and even harmful but companies that have already implemented them will lobby to keep them to make things more difficult for competitors.

by mLuby 6y ago

thegrimmest 6y ago

The absence of specific regulation doesn't mean that you'd have to check everything yourself (however "trust but verify" is a saying for a reason). It would rather mean that the companies providing these services would be competing to most convincingly prove to you that their products are safe for your home and guaranteed to function. This competition would bear out in your heating or electric company guaranteeing their installation and agreeing to be liable for any damages caused by faults in their product. Your car already has such guarantees and warranties, and they are the result of market pressure. Computer security functions similarly - top companies would complete to provide guarantees of security by offering to cover losses that result from breaches. This already happens too. It's not as bleak as you make it out to be. Also we would all be much healthier if we lived in stone huts.

nate_meurer 6y ago
> This competition would bear out in your heating or electric company guaranteeing their installation and agreeing to be liable for any damages caused by faults in their product. That sound nice, but it doesn't work in reality. In reality, companies facing liability can, and often do, respond by simply dissolving, and the liability disappears. This is why I have a concrete tile roof that's falling off the house, with a worthless 30-year guarantee made by a company that no longer exists. And yes, a failing concrete tile roof is as dangerous as it sounds.
- thegrimmest 6y ago
  There are many roofing companies over 50 years old that have stood by their guarantees. The choices are there in the market - you can buy a service from an upstart with no reputation and take a risk (but usually save some cash) or you can buy from an established provider with a reputation and pay a premium. This used to just be the way the world worked before we regulated it. I don't see what was wrong with it exactly.
  - nate_meurer 6y ago
    > There are many roofing companies over 50 years old that have stood by their guarantees. Name one. There are many, many more that haven't. I don't know how to find a company that is guaranteed to be around in even 20 years to honor a warranty, and neither do you. > The choices are there in the market - you can buy a service from an upstart with no reputation and take a risk (but usually save some cash) or you can buy from an established provider with a reputation and pay a premium. It doesn't matter how "established" or "reputable" the company is. There is nothing naturally permanent about any company. Companies shut down all the time for perfectly legitimate and benign reasons, like when the owners retire. How many contractors do you think pass on their businesses to their kids? I'll give you a hint if you need it. And if a company is facing liability, or even the possibility of liability, there is nothing preventing them from shedding some or all of their liability in bankruptcy. The company that installed my roof was big, established, and reputable. They installed concrete tile roofs on two dozen houses in our neighborhood. The owners retired over a decade ago, long before the problems with our roofs became evident. There was no negligence or massive incompetence, no scam of any kind. The company just didn't install the battens correctly, which was very common in the 90's. Most concrete tile roofs were installed incorrectly back then, and there is now a rash of failing roofs around our state. Nobody except the most naive outsider would rely on the promise of warrantees lasting decades to do anything to help this situation. > This used to just be the way the world worked before we regulated it. Citation please. Give me an historic "pre-regulation" example of what you're claiming.
cycomanic 6y ago
So where does the information how dangerous something is comes from? Are companies allowed to lie about other companies, because the first thing I would do as a competitor would be set up a "website" that propagates how dangerous other companies products are. This myth that somehow competition will sort things out really needs to disappear, it has been disproven again and again.

aeternum 6y ago

Regulatory capture is a big problem here. Safety standards become outdated and even harmful but companies that have already implemented them will lobby to keep them to make things more difficult for competitors.